This is why right when he awoke he knew The Paloma came from Hong Kong and he was better able to piece together his ideas in order to solve the case. .
The Detectives Code .
Spade, being the detective in the Maltese Falcon is presumed to have a set of ethics or moral values called "the detective code." The detective should be anonoymous, close mouthed and secretive. As in the Maltese Falcon, Spade ignores rules and conventions of behavoir, because Brigid is paying a lot of money for his services. Spade is loyal to her, but is careful to stick to the justice of the law, by turning her in at the end, claiming that "when a mans partner is killed you are supposed to do something about it." He keeps an emotional distance from everyone in the novel, even his own partner, Archer. .
Themes of Hard Boiled Fiction.
In the apparent plot of the maltese falcon, Spade is helping Brigid to find the falcon and try to find out who killed his partner, Archer. When readers finish reading however, they realize that Spade really deceived and sacrificed Brigid in order that he wasn't killed like his partner. A common apparent plot is the search for a valuable object that turns out to be fake. (On a side note, it is interesting to point out that the falcon led all these people to commit left and murder and is actually fake) It shows us the characters personalities, and motivations all layed out in the last couple of pages).
The reason they use wealthy people, like Brigid in detective stories is due to the fact that they have the money and the means to hire detectives. .
Villains in Hard Boiled Fiction- The hard boiled detective novel uses villains differently than does hard-boiled crime fiction. The villain in the Maltese Falcon (a hard boiled detective novel) would be Gutman and Hammett is the only author who lets us get close to the villain. Hammett tells us specific details about what Gutman looks like, his clothes, his habits and his motivations.
